Street roots., April 10, 2015, Page 4, Image 4

News
Page 4
Street Roots • April 10-16, 2015
The marketing of a drug scourge
‘D reamland’ explores how residents o f a small town in Mexico built a
heroin-trafficking enterprise on the back o f painpill addiction in the U.S.
BY ANN-DERRICK CAILLOT
‘S T A F F W R IT E R
hen black tar heroin first reached
Portland in the 1990s, you could
buy it much like you would buy a
pizza. Call a number, give an address and
wait for a dealer to show up on your block,
hiding small bags of dope in his mouth.
By the time the 2000s rolled around, this
new, convenient way of selling black tar
heroin
was standard in midsize cities around
Dreamland
the country — Charlotte, N.C.; Columbus,
by Sam Quinones
Ohio; Huntington, W.Va. - that had
previously never been heroin towns. On top
of that, black tar heroin overdoses were
reaching epidemic proportions. The masters
of this delivery system, young men from the
a small rancho in Mexico, became known as
the Xalisco Boys.
In his new book, “Dreamland,” seasoned
journalist Sam Quinones tells the story of
how the marketing ingenuity of the Xalisco
Boys along with the relentless marketing
and prescribing of opiate painkillers,
combined into a perfect storm of drug
abuse, addiction and overdose that
continues to keep America captivé.
Quinones, a veteran Los Angeles Times
crime reporter, has spent years reporting
P H O TO BY LUCY NICHOLSON/REUTERS
on the drug trade, gang violence and
Black tar heroin from Mexico has been linked to an increasing number of deaths in the United States.
Mexican immigration. In “Dreamland,” he
combines hours of interviews and
painstaking research
on a team of reporters and my job was to
understand what the story was when this
with his gift for
guy in Columbus began talking about it.
storytelling to weave a write about how drugs were trafficked once
compelling tale of how they came into the U.S. side of the border.
As I was doing that, I found a series of
A.G: It’s in line with a lot of your past work
America descended
stories about people dying of black tar
to focus on the stories of people like the Xalisco
into and endures a
heroin overdoses in Huntington, W.Va. So I
Boys, who don’t get a lot of widespread
dizzying and
attention. Why was it important for you to
called up the police department there, and
devastating opiate
they said well, all our dope comes out of
include the story of the pharmaceutical
epidemic. Quinones
Columbus. So I called up the Columbus
companies, as well?
chatted with me by
DEA, and they began to tell me this
phone from his home
interesting story about these guys driving
S.Q.: Well, as I got into writing about the
in Los Angeles about
around the town selling heroin and how they Xalisco Boys, the other question that their
the Xalisco Boys,
have a delivery service system. (The DEA)
presence or the presence of their dope in
America’s conflicted
1 Ih o w flit I® myself, this Is a®
would arrest these guys, begin operations
Huntington, W.Va., brought up was how is it
relationship with
against them, and then three days later, a
that there’s so many heroin addicts in
astaaag stary® That esse sm all
opiates^ and the pain
week later, two weeks later, they’d be
Huntington, W.Va.? I just always thought of
town could he this m ajor soarce of addiction.
replaced. It was this continual problem. I
heroin as being in Los Angeles, Chicago,
of ear heroin la the Halted
began to write a bunch of different guys who New York City, Baltimore, places like th at..
Ann-Derrick
States was asladhe®fHag
had been arrested. I think I must have sent
What’s it doing in West Virginia?
Gaillot: How did your
out about 15 or 20 letters and nobody
And I realized as time went on that I was
journalistic
work
lead
SAM QUIWONES
responded for a while until one guy called
actually writing the second half of the story.
V E T E R A N REPO RTER you to investigating
-ÏQ R O F " D R E A M L A N D ”
me back who had been a telephone operator The first half of the story was how a
this story and writing
in
this system and had been arrested. He
revolution in U.S. medicine had taken place
a book about it?
said they are from a small town called
with regard to the use of opiates in the
Xalisco. And that opened up an amazing
treatment of pain.
Sam Quinones: Years ago I was a crime
bunch of possibilities, that there could be
On one hand, pain specialists and
reporter in Stockton, Calif., and one thing I
one town where every man in the town is
pharmaceutical companies were convincing
learned about was black tar heroin because
actually a drug trafficker. And then it got
Americans that (an opiate painkiller) is how
the local cops and the DEA told me that
even better because he said they don’t only
you treat pain and this is a safe thing and
heroin in the Western United States always
go to Columbus, and he could name off
it’s virtually non-addictive. That was a big,
came from Mexico and was only black tar. I
dozens of cities where they were selling, all
big part of it. And on the other hand you
went down to Mexico after working in
have the classic street drug dealers in the
Stockton. When I was down there, I did a lot ¿cross the country. And I thought to myself,
this is an amazing story. That orte small
form of the Xalisco Boys, who are masters
of study of and writing about immigration.
town could be this major source of our
of marketing — who understand the power
So that was part of my background when I
heroin in the United States was mind-
did the story. AfterTiving in Mexico, I went
boggling. That was the background to how I
back to the United States and I was placed
■
See QUINONES, page 5